


left before the storm

by flimsy



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Best Friends, Crushes, Friendship/Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-26 03:39:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9860777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flimsy/pseuds/flimsy
Summary: Jughead needs a place to stay. Even if it's just for a night."Jug," Archie says and looks up from his music sheets, spread out on his bed, where he's sitting cross legged, hair mussed like he's been teasing it absentmindedly. Jughead is ready to place bets that the pencil he's holding is chewed to hell and back, too."I borrowed your shower," he says and removes the towel from his head."Wouldn't have guessed," Archie says with a slight grin, the one he gets when Jughead is being kind of a dick and he's not disliking it. "You also left your shoes out on the roof."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set just after episode 4. Typos are mine!

***

Archie is there when Jughead exits the bathroom, in boxers and head wrapped in a towel. He should not be surprised, seeing as this is not only Archie's house, but also Archie's room and, more specifically, Archie's shower that he used for a glorious, steaming, blissful fifteen minutes. Yet all he can say is, "Fuck," when the door falls shut behind him, and then, "Sorry," when this seems like an insufficient response not only to himself but also, judging by Archie's face, to Archie. 

"Jug," Archie says and looks up from his music sheets, spread out on his bed, where he's sitting cross legged, hair mussed like he's been teasing it absentmindedly. Jughead is ready to place bets that the pencil he's holding is chewed to hell and back, too. 

"I borrowed your shower," he says and removes the towel from his head. 

"Wouldn't have guessed," Archie says with a slight grin, the one he gets when Jughead is being kind of a dick and he's not disliking it. "You also left your shoes out on the roof."

"Oh, yeah." Jughead shrugs. "I figured it'd be rude to come in with them on." He manages a small grin in return and sits on the empty chair in front of Archie's desk. It's an effort to not start playing with his wet hair, but he manages; it's not like they haven't been in each other's company like this before. A summer ago, another lifetime, is still a lifetime of his. "I'll treat you to a burger as renumeration." 

"Oh, forget that," Archie smiles and shrugs. "You alright?" He tilts his head and sits up a bit more, cranes his neck. He still moves like he should be twenty pounds lighter, like he's still the gangly kid from six months ago. Jughead, aware of his own state of undress, tries not to stare. 

He clears his throat and nods. "I, yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. There was a bit of a logistical issue at home." It's not a lie. Jughead doesn't lie. The truth presents in many shapes and forms. 

"Burst pipe?" Archie nods. He drops his - assumably chewed up - pen on his bed and stretches, and Jughead nods and shrugs. "Something like that. You could say my housing has become unavailable."

There. Archie tilts his head, and this is the Archie that knows Jughead like nobody else knows Jughead, knows that Jughead would never ask for help, the Archie that Jughead was counting on. "You wanna crash until it's all dried up?" Jughead feels terrible and manipulative. 

"I don't wanna like, impose on your wild orgies and stuff," he says and Archie laughs, embarrassed and too loudly, and then says, "Geraldine is- I mean Ms Grundy left. And like, we didn't have orgies. And she also didn't come here ever anyway, so like, if you need a place to crash you know you can. And dad's already fixed you up a plate with dinner too."

He climbs off the bed, pads over to the door. "I'm gonna get the spare mattress from upstairs. Wanna hang out in the garage after dinner? Dad soundproofed it and everything. It's kinda cool."

Jughead fidgets, then nods. Suddenly his throat feels tight with things he wants to tell Archie and doesn't want to tell Archie; coming here was simultaneously his only viable option and possibly an ineffable error in judgement. "Sure, maestro." 

 

***

The clock on Archie's wall - the one he picked out at a yardsale two years ago, Jughead knows because he was there - is ticking too loudly for Jughead to fall asleep. He's curled up on the spare mattress on the floor next to Archie's bed, the slope of Archie's shoulder, rising and falling with his breathing, just in sight against the faint light from the window. Archie drifted off a few minutes into murmured, tired bedtime conversation, picked up from where they left off in the garage before getting ready for bed - music and Archie's dream of making it and all that. Jughead is still going over everything he said, afraid the upset in his routine might've made him slip up. If he has, Archie hasn't given any indication of it. For the few hours they spent in the garage - the _studio_ \- it was almost like a trip back in time to before things between them changed. 

Jughead breathes in and out deliberately, allows himself to feel the air fill his lungs and also to feel it leave them again, and then shifts around to face away from the bed and Archie's sleeping body to stare at the door instead. The clock is still ticking and Jughead can't stop his brain from its wild merry go round spin. 

_Before_ doesn't only mean _before_ Archie changed, it also means before _Jughead_ changed and that was months prior to the construction work and the football and the sudden impact on stud-ness on Archie's (love) life. Jughead could pinpoint the exact day, possibly the exact time - because he remembers the light hitting Archie's ginger crown just like that - if he were to let himself, but that's another thing he doesn't want to think about, especially not here and now. 

Another deliberate breath, in and out, and another, in and out, until he becomes afraid that he's breathing loudly enough for Archie to wake up which almost makes him want to hyperventilate more. 

The thing is. The _thing_ is that nothing has made him want to run away from Archie before, not like this. He compartmentalized it when his dad was laid off, rationalized that Archie, truly, couldn't have done anything about that and that any sort of anger directed at him would've been nothing but a projection of blame onto a familial substitute. Jughead of all people knows better than this. 

He shifts again, curling up more into the blanket he doesn't really need; it's humid and warm up here, but sleeping without it would make him feel even more exposed. The drive-in at the outskirts of the town, already giving way into the river depression, it's cooler there. Cool enough to want a sleeping bag to sleep in even in summer, and even more so in winter. Jughead remembers his toes, in three pairs of socks, numb and cold until he figured out how to heat a brick on the small radiator to keep him warm at night. 

He remembers the sound of that radiator - tick, tick, tick, almost like the clock on Archie's wall. Maybe it's not too loud, but too familiar for him to sleep. Maybe it reminds him too much of a home he had only for a few months, but one that he made for himself and intended to keep. Tick, tick, tick. Jughead remembers falling asleep to that sound that first night after Mom and Jelly left, syncing his breathing with the clicks until he felt calm and empty. 

That, too, he didn't project on Archie. Tried not to, and didn't tell him either because if he had, he couldn't have stopped himself from being angry at people other than his father. The last time he talked to Jelly, she and Mom were on their way to Florida, and he told her she should kiss a crocodile for him to which she started lecturing him about the differences between crocodiles and alligators. He misses her so much he can barely even look at the folded up picture he keeps in his jacket anymore, misses her almost more than he misses Mom, definitely misses her more than he misses the house, and definitely, definitely misses her more than he misses Dad, who isn't even gone, who just isn't _there_. 

Tick, tick, tick. For a while after the day, that sunlight-on-Archie's-head-hour, he thought it was just because Archie was a constant in his life. Best friends and partners in mischief, the one person who Jughead felt loved his weirdness as part of him. With Jelly and Mom gone, he still had Archie and for weeks he convinced himself that that's what it _had_ to be because he didn't want it to be that other thing that would eventually eat him up and ruin him and ruin them. 

Then: dreams. Then: Archie after construction. Then: Archie who was suddenly another person, whom Jughead barely even recognized but still wanted so achingly he could feel it with every fibre of his body. 

Jughead fumbles for his phone - 1:34 - and sits up; his heart is suddenly pounding so loudly he's certain that Archie must be able to hear it, will either wake up or build a dream around it. Jughead's chest goes tight and tighter and he has to close his eyes and count down from twenty to fight off the rising panic and, more, the urge to pack his things and run. 

There's no running because there's school tomorrow and Archie will be there and if he runs there'll be questions. He'll stay. He'll stay for the night and not think about the rise and fall of Archie's body under the covers or the way his neck looks like in bed, turned toward Jughead, up close and vulnerable, or the scent of the room filled with everything that is Archie. 

He won't think about any of these things, but he'll stay the night.

***


End file.
